Sitting down for a nice lunch after our first flight of the day, the conversation turned to the morning events. “Did you get a load of the new nurse in the ER? Man, talk about green”, the medic was telling the nurse. The nurse smiled and said in a very loud voice, “I’ll get the Fully, the life saving Fully”. (I know its spelled wrong, but I’m not asking either. People been asking questions around here) I, wondering what this great miracle of modern science is, asked, “what’s a fully” as I take a big bite out of my sandwich. “It’s the tube that’s put in your dick that goes to the piss bag” the timid little medic replied eating her fries. The nurse with a mouth half full of food says, “Did you see the way she grabbed that poor guys thing, she grabbed it with a grip like my father in-law grabs the last longneck out of the cooler at one of our barbecues and shoved it in so far I thought it was going to come out his ass.” I think I’m full now.Mealtime was always a good time to sit and talk about work. It always seems to bring out all the most morbid details that one encounters in this line of work. I didn’t realize how much crap medical people have to deal with, and I’m not talking about paperwork, restocking the ship, and dealing with all the details of their job. I’m talking about real crap, somehow every one of them has a particular crap story that they have to tell.After some time in the saddle, I got my own crap story to tell one day. While waiting for the crew at the pad for an inter-facility I got a call on the radio to bring the something bag. (They name all their bags) Looking at the ship, I see enough bags to go camping for a week, I call back and ask, “What bag?” after a slight pause I hear “The blue one Klank” Ok, boy am I learning stuff now, wow, the blue bag, must get blue bag to the crew, stat. As I wander around the emergency room for a while, some kind sole takes pity on me and ask, “Are you looking for your team?” “Yes I am” I reply to this sweet little thing in her white smock with bunnies on it. “Their in the ICU”, I look at her with a glazed over look that must have been apparent, she points and says, “Just follow the signs that say ICU”. Ok, ICU, good, signs, good, follow good ICU signs, must get through with the blue bag to ICU to save the life of the patient, its all up to me.ICU, I learned is not a happy place, many sick people here, I guess that makes sense, never gave it much thought before. Walking down the hall, looking for the crew, I get this feeling of being unclean, that there are bad things in the air and its sticking to my clothes and I’m breathing it in. Must be strong, get the blue bag to the crew, code three. “Their down there honey, room seven” this rather large woman with kind eyes and a reassuring smile tells me. Rounding the corner in room seven, I see a curtain cracked open about four inches. I’ve made it; I can only pray that it’s in time.Sticking my head through the slit I saw what no person, in any profession, should ever see. Something so bad I cant, and shouldn’t even try to describe it, but let me try anyway. There was this woman, old enough to have babysat George Burns, lying on the bed, with a nurse attending to this little accident she must have had. Picture the changing of a diaper on a baby, and how you hold their legs in the air to clean a very messy number two. The nurse looks up at me and with the expression I must have had on my face, it almost made her smile. With a little smirk, she said, “Next one over” I will never be quite the same person I once was, I must regroup, and get the blue bag to the crew. This will be, after all, just like those things you see in combat, accomplish the mission and live with the pain, oh the horror. Carefully going over to the next bed, I slowly peek through the curtain, I see a flight suit, good, focus on the flight suit, and only the flight suit.“I have the bag”, I exclaim with great pride and sense of fulfillment, knowing that now I too have become a saver of lives in this noble profession. “Just put it under the gurney, we don’t need it now, but just wanted to have it, just in case” the nurse says calmly without even looking at me. “We’ll be about ten more minutes”.I feel the need to leave this place, this place of; I’m not sure how to express how this place makes me feel. I feel dirty, out of my element, and slightly dazed at the sight, sounds, and smells of this man, made, cold, sterile environment. I walk into the hall and first look right and then to the left, damn, how the hell do I get out of here? I was so intent on getting here; I didn’t pay attention to anything. Going to the desk to find my kind, caring nurse to get the directions I need, I see the nurse that I had the little encounter with in, now what is what has become, the horrors of room seven. “Could you please tell me how to get to the emergency room?” I say softly with a slight duress in my voice. She looks up, and with that same, you dumb ass, smirk of a grin, points and says, “Follow the signs that say ER”.Back outside, by my ship, in my environment, with fresh air, and no artificial lights, I clear my head, and think of what I have just undergone. First thing that comes to mind is the movie, Apocalypse Now, when the guy got away from the tiger and kept repeating, “Never get out of the boat”. I know, never go in the hospital, I hate hospitals, and I always have.That’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve said today, hell who likes hospitals? Nothing good ever happens in a hospital, it’s always bad. Some would say, babies are born at a hospital, that’s good, well that might be true, but they make you take them home after a few days, hell they could at least keep them till they had a job. Also, what’s this no nooky for six weeks crap, I make one little off the cuff comment to the doc on how sore her jaw is going to be, and I don’t remember much about the next few days.I think if the hospitals did one small thing to improve their image it would make a big difference to future generations. I think if hospitals sold beer in the waiting room it would create a whole new feeling about the place. People wouldn’t mind the long wait when things got busy, husbands would volunteer to take the day off work to accompany their wives for appointments. (That would be a beautiful thing) hell men in general, would go to the hospital more often, and not just when their bleeding real bad, and that would improve health nation wide. I mean, how many of you would go to a bar that didn’t sell booze?Got off the subject, if there is on, ok, med crew, lunch, I’ve found that a blissful ignorance on all medical subjects is preferred. Most of the time they speak in their own language, and can say some pretty gory stuff, and as long as I don’t ask them to put it in a way that I can understand, I can enjoy my lunch and the company of the crew.

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About Me

I am a retired army aviator, and flew EMS helicopters from 1999 until 2015. I have flown at many different programs under traditional, community based, and hybrid models. I enjoy interacting with crewmembers as we together learn how to avoid becoming a statistic and the topic of someone else's safety brief. I teach Air Medical Resource Management, and am a member of the National EMS Pilot's Association's board of directors.